Web 2.0 Summit: Meg Whitman, eBay CEO

What an inopportune time for a conference appearance. As eBay CEO Meg Whitman takes the Web 2.0 Summit stage, eBay shares are trading down more than 6% amid concerns that the company’s core online auction business is slowing. Though eBay posted earnings yesterday that exceeded Wall Street expectations, its auction listings fell year over year for the second consecutive quarter and it suffered its first sequential dip in active eBay.com users ever.

Huh. We’re already 10 minutes into the conversation and Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media, hasn’t even mentioned yesterday’s earnings. We have learned, however, that Whitman actually uses eBay and once sold her Mickey Mouse skis on it.

Is there a social-networking play in PayPal? O’Reilly asks.

Whitman responds that the “question is, over time, could PayPal become not only your wallet, but your reputation and your identity as you move around the Web? And I think that’s possible. There’s a huge opportunity here, but you have to be careful because you’re dealing with identity, financial identity, presence and reputation.”

Wow. Turns out eBay has a law-enforcement division that apparently includes some former FBI people. That said, eBay believes people are basically good, but that doesn’t mean EVERYONE is basically good. “We’ve developed expertise to help fight bad buys on the Web,” Whitman says, adding that eBay has some 2,000 people who do fraud modeling, etc., to keep eBay free of “bad actors on the Net.”

Then, onto other areas of the company: Are you still bullish on Skype? O’Reilly asks.

“Sure we’re stull bullish,” Whitman parries. “We’re a bit dissapointed, but bullish. We’re better positioned after the earnout to delight customers. We don’t have to worry as much about revenues and operating margins at this juncture. Skype still has great potential, and Skype 4.0 is on the way.”

O’Reilly: You’re looking for a new CEO?

Whitman: Yes, we are looking for a new CEO. There has been tremendous interest.

I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

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